Questionable Shapes (Unabridged‪)‬

Questionable Shapes by William Dean Howells. Narrated by Christianne Lupher.

With touches of humor, pathos, and romance, author William Dean Howells questions the nature of the spiritual and leaves the answers to the listener in this unusual collection of ghost stories from the 19th century. A famed proponent of literary realism, Howells focuses not on the supernatural elements of ghostly encounters, but on the psychological responses of his characters. He takes his title from Hamlet's words at seeing the ghost of his father: "Thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee." 

Howells' characters are men of reason, men of science, men and women of truth with agnostic leanings. All encounter a mental or spiritual phenomenon they find too real or too practical to deny, and so they, like Hamlet, must approach these "questionable shapes" from their own worldviews and query what they mean.